It began as a listing on our monthly calendar – Book Talk with Young Adults. For a library this must become a monthly offering but how do I gather these young adults ? Young adult reading is not often a social exercise and our reading culture is not always inclusive enough to welcome all readers or not ‘fancy’ enough to warrant a gathering. I notice that reading groups gather if there is the right mix of status, food, drink, company and such. At Bookworm we can offer none of these – but we can offer thoughtful listening, keen interest and an outstanding collection. So we agreed to try this out.
Summer, is that month when many young people find their way to the library. Some from university and under graduate compulsion to do internships in community based organisation, some from a love of books and reading and some from choosing to spend their time more meaningfully in the summer. So, secretly I knew we had a captive audience.
I began the activation of this idea by talking with our most eager reader of the year, Suhani. Suhani loves reading, she finds herself and the world in her reading and has been raised on a diet of very good books from her home so, she is a young reader with discernment. At Bookworm we have been able to open up her reading diet a bit more by urging her to talk and think about what she reads, make connections with the world and also slow down her reading to take – it – in. Suhani is a fantastic learner and so it was an easy conversation where she agreed to hold the session with me. I knew if nothing else, Suhani and I would talk about books, I love that time with her.
This week at Bookworm we have also been blessed to have another young reader return to spend a week helping in the library. Advay. Advay’s love for Bookworm is strong and primal. He came to the library at the age of two and a half and has held Bookworm in his heart ever since. In a separate conversation at the library we were talking about how a banner we hung out has been stolen/ lost to the world and how a sign board of ours has been stripped and I said, ‘ we must have some enemies in the community’ and Advay says ,” HOW can Bookworm have any enemies?” How can a library have enemies ?’. Questions for another blog post. But I use them to elucidate the deep faith, love and commitment to the library that Advay has, So I had book talker #2 lined up.
The third young reader I invited is young Aarav. He comes reluctantly to the library but has such an active, curious mind that it is simply a matter of engaging him with books and having faith that the plot will grip him and bring him back. That and the fact that he can say things like , “Sujata forces me to read and so I am here !”.
Our evening began with dragging some Bookworm team members to listen to the book talkers, and we settled down to booktalk.
In our introductions we immediately found that to be a ‘reader’ was not only one thing, it was an amalgamation of many things and in different ways. In our group of 8, some of us loved books and read and read, others loved books and struggled to make and find time to read, still others did not read at all. Someone else did not like books but has found that love in the library and such. Reading is not an end in itself – it is a process, activated by agents and other stimulus like time, access, motivation and choice. Being a reader in the same way is not an idealistic bookworm but something more complex and diverse. I loved how we opened our circle of talk because it gave us the space to feel included. We were all readers, that was established.
The evening of booktalk was precious for me. Suhani opened up the session talking about her book choice, Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper and comparing the character to ………..by Elizabeth Laird. She shared her understanding of the social and economic privilege that characters had in both the books and particularly drew out attention to the ending of Out of my Mind not necessarily being a happy ending and how that mirrors life more closely. She said, “ not every experience ends happily and so I liked this book because it shows us a different way.”
Advay spoke of The Hobbit and how he admires the world that Tolkein describes yet also the economy of words in some places – his writing is ‘just right’ he felt. He engaged in a 1:1 conversation with Anandita who loves The Hobbit and for two – three seconds we all looked on as they communed in a way that only two readers who draw on the same book can do !
Aarav had just finished the fourth book in the Giver Quartet and was still mulling over the way it all came together. He reluctantly admitted that it was a very good read for him and he enjoyed it. I made every effort to not start clapping because when a reluctant reader finds this joy it is no small jubilation.
Anandita shared The Poet’s Dog by Patricial MacLachlan and Swati shared The Book Thief by Mark Zuzak and that left me , with One Crazy Summer by Rita Garcia Williams. This book is made extra special for me because Suhani has shared it with me, a kind of return recommendation that can only happen in the library. We had a good booktalk and perhaps it all happened because we read, all of us.